Gaethje has not wrapped hands since 2015
Justin Gaethje has not used hand wraps in training since 2015, relying entirely on Trevor Wittman's ONX gloves for protection.
Snapshot · The Joe Rogan Experience
JRE MMA Show #181 with Justin Gaethje & Trevor Wittman
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Jun 20, 2026
Where this was said
Gaethje's Drug Near-Death Experience and The Parents Who Made Him
At 1:25:33 · chapter starts 1:22:25
Gaethje finishes the story he started earlier. He studied human services in college because he genuinely wanted to help people coming off drugs. But he also admits the drugs felt good. He lost close friends. He understood what people were chasing because he chased it himself. Then around 2016, he woke up in an ambulance, pretty sure he had died. His parents, he says, do not deserve that. That thought — not self-preservation, not fear, but a sense of debt and love to the two people who gave him everything — was the reason he never touched drugs again. He reflects that being a good person is easier when you've had good people as models. He can't be generous, open, and curious without the example his parents set. His mother's face in an ambulance, this time from a drug incident rather than a fight, carries the same power as her face after the Max Holloway knockout.
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